Health & WellnessS


Health

New Natural Products Act Against Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria


Science Daily
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:12 UTC
A group of antibiotic natural products discovered at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig points to a new mode of action against pathogenic bacteria. Isolated from myxobacteria, the substances prevent an enzyme of the pathogens from being able to translate their genetic material. In this way, the propagation of bacteria - such as tuberculosis pathogens - is inhibited.
HZI biologist Dr. Herbert Irschik (left) and HZI chemist Dr. Rolf Jansen
© Helmholtz Centre for Infection ResearchHZI biologist Dr. Herbert Irschik (left) and HZI chemist Dr. Rolf Jansen (right).

A working group at Rutgers University in New Jersey has now joined up with HZI researchers and discovered in detail how these compounds interact with the target in pathogenic bacteria. The novel target is different from the target of known antibiotics such as rifamycin, a standard medication to counteract tuberculosis.

This discovery makes the Braunschweig natural products extremely interesting candidates for a development as antibiotics - especially in view of the fact that the substances also kill bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics. Today, the scientists publish their results in the distinguished journal Cell.
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Australian food firms pushed to come clean on nano-ingredients

Leigh Dayton
The Australian
Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:41 UTC
Australia has taken its first step towards regulation of nanotechnology, with a call for food companies to disclose if they are including in their products particles invisible to the naked eye.

Nano-sized zinc is used as a preservative in food and packaging, and nano-sized clay particles make biodegradable sweet wrappers sturdy.

There has been no regulation on the use of nanotechnology -- particles manufactured at the scale of atoms and molecules. But the national food authority is now proposing that food companies should be required to disclose any nano-ingredients in their products.
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Info

State urges Vermonters to prepare for pandemic


Associated Press
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:59 UTC
COLCHESTER - The Vermont Department of Health is urging residents to prepare for a possible worldwide flu pandemic by stocking their pantries with enough food to stay home for two weeks.

People should buy things like dried foods that have a long shelf life, said Health Commissioner Wendy Davis.

"The idea behind that is that people might need to be home for a period even of up to two weeks while everybody's getting over being ill and while we're trying to contain the spread of illness," Davis said.

Public health officials say that during a flu pandemic families won't be able to go to work, school or the store and businesses will have to be able to operate for weeks without employees showing up for work.
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Syringe

Health Care Workers Refuse Flu Shot


Associated Press
Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:11 UTC
Nearly 60 Percent Of Health Care Workers Refuse Vaccine

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Operating room nurse Pauline Taylor knows her refusal to get a flu shot is based on faulty logic.

But ever since she got sick after getting a shot a few years ago, she's sworn off the vaccine.

"I rarely get sick. The only thing I could narrow it down to is that I had gotten this shot," said Taylor, who works at University Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. "I know that it's not a live virus. It just seemed pretty coincidental."

Such stories frustrate Dr. William Schaffner.

Comment: The nurses may be onto something. Notice the guilt-tripping of the last three paragraphs. Thinking for yourself and looking out for your health is selfish! Can't have the sheeple making their own decisions.

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Health

A New Discovery Has Been Made About How Antioxidants Attack Cancer Cells

Russell Johnston
Natural News
Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:57 UTC
There's a new reason, and a big one, to think that we benefit from free-radical-inhibiting antioxidants. We've long thought that by reducing free radicals, antioxidants can help prevent cancer, of course. But a recent experiment at Johns Hopkins and published in the March 14 issue of Science shows how antioxidants may be doing much more: interfering with the growth of cancers that are already established, and potentially, even reversing them once established, by knocking out communications signals between cancer cells that encourage cells to grow and divide. Those communications signals turn out to be... free radicals, which the cancer cells often produce in abundance. Runaway cell division was actually slowed when cancer cells were introduced to the antioxidant N-acetyl-L-cysteine, under experimental conditions. This now demonstrates the existence of a mechanism that can allow a simple antioxidant to slow down or reverse a cancer that's already in place.
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Think tank: Toothless policy on fluoride

Kathy Sinnott
Times Online
Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:54 UTC
MEP says additive in our water is a menace

Every day, Irish sanitary authorities add hexafluorosilicic acid to public water supplies under the terms of the 1960 Fluoridation Act. Unlike the naturally occurring, poorly absorbed and therefore safer calcium fluoride found in toothpaste and mouthwash, hexafluorosilicic acid is an industrial waste by-product which is an active and highly absorbed molecule when swallowed. Over a lifetime of drinking small quantities of this fluoride, substantial amounts accumulate in the body, especially in hard tissue such as teeth and bone.
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Einstein

Move over pinochle, Web surfing stimulates aging brains

Michelle Meyers
CNET.news
Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:03 UTC
The University of California at Los Angeles this week gave us the perfect antidote to Nick Carr's musings in The Atlantic about how the Internet is turning us into multitasking scatterbrains with diminishing attention spans.
Brain
© Credit: UCLA NewsroomFunctional MRI brain scans show how searching the Internet dramatically engages brain neural networks (in red). The image on the left displays brain activity while reading a book; the image on the right displays activity while engaging in an Internet search.
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Cheeseburger

Up to 93 possible E. coli cases in Ontario linked to Harvey's as outbreak spreads


The Canadian Press
Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:18 UTC
As many as 93 people in Ontario could be afflicted with a potentially deadly strain of E. coli linked to a popular fast-food restaurant, health authorities reported Thursday.

Laboratory tests have confirmed 15 cases of poisoning due to E coli O157:H7, with 78 others under investigation, stemming from a Harvey's restaurant in North Bay, Ont.

Dr. Catherine Whiting, the area's medical officer of health, said in an interview the outbreak has spread beyond North Bay, with one confirmed case in Sudbury, Ont.

Four other cases - including one in eastern Ontario - may also be linked to the outbreak, she said.

Victims range in age from five to 84 years old, with nine reported to be in hospital and the rest recovering at home.
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Health

UN assisting Afghan authorities to respond to diarrhoea outbreak


UN News Centre
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:36 UTC
Map - Afganistan
© Unknown
United Nations agencies are helping authorities to respond to a diarrhoea outbreak in Afghanistan, where only about a quarter of the population has access to safe drinking water and 20 per cent of child deaths is attributed to the easily preventable disease.

According to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, the outbreak is located mainly in five provinces - Nangarhar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan and Faryab - with a few cases also reported in seven others. Twenty-two people have died out of the almost 4,000 cases reported so far.
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Health

37 human anthrax cases in northern Iraq outbreak


Reuters
Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:33 UTC
Thirty-seven people have been infected by anthrax in northern Iraq in the country's first outbreak of the disease since the 1980s, the health minister in the Kurdish autonomous region said on Sunday.

Health Minister Ziryan Othman said the disease appeared to have been passed on from livestock. The first human case of the outbreak was discovered in remote Dahuk province last month.

None of the reported cases had yet proven fatal, he told Reuters. The 37 cases in humans have all affected the patients' skin, rather than their lungs or internal organs, as occurs in more serious anthrax cases.

Othman said the authorities have ordered that infected animals be slaughtered and buried, while animals not yet infected should be vaccinated.
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